Being “of a certain age”, I sometimes just shake my head at how remarkably stupid people can be when it comes to such things. But then I recall when, in elementary school, people who wrote with their left hand were literally forced to shift to the right — for absolutely no reason whatsoever. For a species that loves variety, we can damn sure cling to standards, no matter how ridiculous they may be.
However — and let me put on my asbestos overalls here — I think it behooves us that there are people on all sides of the many racial divides who have a vested, and sometimes even financial, interest in keeping those divides as wide as possible. They make bank off a racial mentality, and we let them continue to do so. Allow me an example.
Some years back, perhaps eight or nine, the lacrosse team at Duke University in North Carolina held an off-campus party, part of which involved the hiring of a stripper. The stripper was black. The team is completely white. The stripper left the party and told the cops she’d been raped by three members of the team.
A number of things happened simultaneously. The local district attorney, who was up for re-election, pushed hard for a conviction of the three boys. The university suspended the entire team, not just the three accused. Forty seven professors at Duke formed the “Committee of 47” to protest the athletic department. And a number of civil rights activists, most importantly Al Sharpton, came to town and ran for the media. Sharpton in particular insisted these boys were all “guilty, guilty, guilty!”.
Then things fell apart. It was revealed that the DA had withheld evidence, most importantly that the young lady had been raped by her boyfriend, not the team, and she had, for some unfathomable reason, lied about it to protect him from going back to prison. Suddenly, the daily protests disappeared, the Committee of 47 quietly disbanded, and Sharpton vanished in the night. Duke and the city of Durham were sued and forced to pay several million dollars to the three the DA falsely accused. No one on the Committee nor Sharpton ever apologized to three students that only days before they were calling to be tossed into prison for life.
Now, one would say this cant compare to the centuries of abuse heaped on blacks by whites, and one would be right. But the point is, in this case both sides were working the system hard to keep that racial divide wide open, no matter what the truth of the situation might be. What Sharpton did was, IMHO, little different from the Detroit cop who pounds a black person into the ground for merely being a black person out for a walk. If anything, perhaps worse, because he has built a very lucrative career out of reframing things to suit the agenda he feels will sell the best, no matter who it hurts in the process.
If we want to be serious about confronting racism, we have to be willing to confront anyone who would exploit it for their personal gain. We have to be willing to look past the “But he’s such a good guy!” and the “But she’s such a strong ally!” mindset to say, “Yeah, and they made three-point-two million off it last year” and then ask the more difficult question of why we let anyone — whether an individual or a big corporation — turn this affront into a money-making venture… because trust me, those are the ones who keep racism front and centre, on all sides. They’ve turned it into a career, and maybe it’s time we send them to the unemployment line.